The Information: November 2000

. . . I SEE SUPERMODEL UNDERPANTS

Jan 29, 2007

Okay, so, sure, the Victoria's Secret catalog is free, and, yes, it automatically shows up in your mailbox each and every month, no questions asked. So why would you buy Patrick McMullan's new photo book Secrets of the Riviera (Welcome Rain Publishers, $35), with all the familiar, ahem, faces? Two words: pullout posters. Three of them, to be exact, of Gisele, Heidi, and Tyra, in their undergarments, 22 by 26 inches. All pictures are live shots from the underwear maker's runway show--a fundraiser for AmFAR--at last summer's Cannes Film Festival.

» SOMEWHERE IN LITTLE ITALY No matter what your ethnic background or what may have influenced your tastes in your formative years, deep down, somewhere, you know that the Olive Garden sucks. You knew it even as you, at one time or another, slurped up that evil franchise's fettuccine all' Elmer's Glue. So when we tell you that Esquire food and travel correspondent John Mariani, with his wife, Galina, has written The Italian-American Cookbook (Harvard Common Press, $17), you understand that we are not talking about that kind of thing. We're talking, rather, about the very best Italian dishes as they have been redefined in the American kitchen, from old standbys like spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce to elaborate risottos and gnocchis--dishes that befuddle even the sharpest line cooks at the Olive Garden.

» A BETTER BENZ Was anyone really complaining about Mercedes-Benz's range-topping S500 and its two-door brother, the CL500? Did anyone feel that 302 hp and every techno-whatsit weren't enough? Just in case, Benz has upped the ante with its new models, the S55 and CL55. (Prices are not yet available, but figure them to pass the $100,000 mark.) Both the coupe and the sedan have been thoroughly modified by MB's in-house skunk works, AMG, which has installed a 354 hp engine, a racing-derived suspension, and an extra dollop of exclusivity that apparently doesn't come with a garden-variety three-pointed star.

The Endorsement

I remember being little and getting sick. Flu season promised a low-grade fever, congestion, cough. Mom would take my temp with her hand, just a bit warm, and tuck me in for a day at home. For comfort and cure, there would be chicken soup, The Price Is Right, and the mediciney soothe of Vicks VapoRub. As she cracked open the blue jar and rubbed it on my clogged chest, the scent overtook me, and so did the childhood confidence that--with Mom at my bedside--the raging beast of illness was being brought to heel by a power greater than me.

Like Razzles, which billed themselves as both candy and gum, and like light, which those who know say is both particle and wave, VapoRub is a puzzle, an amazing substance that can't be pinned down--cool yet hot, creamy lightning one moment and gaseous thunder the next. Lunsford Richardson's alchemy in his North Carolina kitchen 110 years ago was a little-heralded miracle of science; he tested his Croup and Pneumonia Salve on his son Smith. Eventually, father and son would blue-bottle it and, in 1912, give it the name that still sounds futuristic. These days, folks swear it cures toenail fungus, and ravers have even been known to smear it in surgical masks that they wear while dancing to enhance the Ecstasy buzz. But there are still those of us who, fed up with the congestion, need only open the jar and inhale to know that everything is going to be all right. --BOB IVRY

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